Sansa 280 Problems in Ubuntu Linux

[gogleion]

Hello,
Im using a sansa 280 as my player, loaded rockbox but the player (the physical device) will not show up in linux. The player will not work correctly in the default bootloader, I have the gamma screen that other 280 users had. I am currently using Ubuntu Linux 7.04 Feisty Fawn. I know that the bootloader needs to be x.2 for it to work, its just I have no way of installing it on the player. Thank you in advance.

[Strommy]

Try this to fix the gamma screen.

"The quick steps are:
1. Go into Recovery Mode.
1.a. Turn off your Sansa.
1.b. Turn on the HOLD switch.
1.c. Hold the Record button down and push the power button. Don't let go of the Record button until you see "Welcome to Recovery Mode" on the screen.
1.d. Plug in the USB cable as directed.
2. Mount the drive.
2.a. If you have Windows, it'll show up as a USB Mass Storage Device automatically.
2.b. If you have Linux, you might have to mount it manually. (the device will be /dev/sda or /dev/sdb or something similar)
3. Copy over a patched bootloader.
3.a. You can get a working bootloader from ftp://wisard.no-ip.com/pp5022.mi4
3.b. Copy ONLY the .mi4 file to the device.
4. Unmount and unplug.
4.a. In windows, stop the device with the "Safely remove hardware" option. In Linux, umount /dev/sda (or your device).
5. It will update the firmware and reboot. You should be able to boot both firmwares fine now (remember to turn HOLD off)."
-xoring

[barrywardell]

There has been a new version of sansapatcher released on download.rockbox.org a few days ago which should fix all the problems with loading the Sansa firmware that you were having. Now that that's available, I recommend that approach over using a non-official bootloader.